For various reasons, it may be desirable to ensure that a used container, such as a bottle intended to contain a liquid such as a valuable liquid, (e.g. spirits such as alcoholic beverages), is not re-filled with a replacement quantity of another liquid, the characteristics and quality of which may differ from the original contents. Attempts to provide closures which make such re-filling difficult are not always proof against determined tampering. While it is considered advantageous to provide a tamper-indicating means which provides evidence that the bottle and its original contents are intact, if the bottle is resealable with a substitute cap or closure, there may be little to indicate to a purchaser that the bottle has been tampered with and that the contents may be inferior to the original contents.
It has, therefore, been found desirable to provide a closure which cannot be removed without an extreme level of effort, or breakage being caused to the bottle. Such an arrangement is shown, for example, in GB Patent No. 2 274 837 also by the present Applicant, selected merely by way of illustration.
Whilst it is very important that an original closure cannot be removed without visible damage or breakage being caused either to the closure and/or to the bottle, it has been found that a closure that cannot readily be removed will become the target of attempts to re-fill the container by overcoming the feature provided in the closure intended to hinder or prevent such refilling. Therefore, in addition to providing devices to prevent re-filling of bottles, there is a need to provide such devices with further tamper-indicating features which, while not acting in any preventive role, give a clear irremovable and/or irreversible indication that a bottle has been opened since being originally filled with the genuine contents. Such clear indicators have been somewhat lacking in previous closure designs.
Furthermore, there is a need for simple designs of closure assemblies allowing easy and reliable manufacture, assembly and fitting to bottle necks. Such simplicity has been somewhat lacking in previous closure. designs.
It is an object of at least one aspect of the present invention to provide an improved closure assembly which does not have any parts which are frangible and/or removed upon initial opening and which are liable to be reattached by counterfeiters or the like in a way suggesting that the closure assembly had not previously been opened.
It is also an object of a least one aspect of the present invention to obviate or at least mitigate at least one of the aforementioned problems/disadvantages in the prior art.